The general equilibrium incidence of environmental taxes

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Fullerton, Don; Heutel, Garth
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2006.07.004
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 571-591
• 关键词: distributional burdens; pollution policy; analytical solutions; sources side; uses side

摘要

We study the distributional effects of a pollution tax in general equilibrium, with general forms of substitution where pollution might be a relative complement or substitute for labor or for capital in production. We find closed form solutions for pollution, output prices, and factor prices. Various special cases help clarify the impact of differential factor intensities, substitution effects, and output effects. Intuitively, the pollution tax might place disproportionate burdens on capital if the polluting sector is capital intensive, or if labor is a better substitute for pollution than is capital; however, conditions are found where these intuitive results do not hold. We show exact conditions for the wage to rise relative to the capital return. Plausible values are then assigned to all the parameters, and we find that variations over the possible range of factor intensities have less impact than variations over the possible range of elasticities. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.